Page 40 of Shatter

"Ignore him." Ulf watches him go. "He's pissed he was stuck on the gate and missed the show inside."

When I go back in, she's sitting up against the headboard.

The black eye has gone the color of a plum, swollen almost shut, and the split in her lip has scabbed dark.

She's staring at the door, not at me.

Past me, like she's looking at something a thousand miles away.

Her hand is pressed over her mouth, and she's shaking.

Not the long, hard waves of last night.

Small, fast tremors, running through her shoulders and down her arms, rattling the pill cup where her elbow touches the nightstand.

"Hey." I set the bag and the coffee down on the dresser, slowly. "Hey. What's wrong?"

She doesn't answer.

My legs lock with the effort of staying where I am.

I crouch down at the foot of the bed, low, where I'm smaller than she is, and I wait.

It takes a long time.

Finally, her hand drops away from her mouth.

"I need to go back." Her voice is barely a whisper. "To the diner."

"You can't." I keep my hands on my knees where she can see them.

"I have to." Her eyes finally come to mine, wide and wet. "There's something there. Something I hid."

Cold prickles over my skin, scalp to wrists.

"What is it?" I don't move.

She shakes her head.

Her fingers twist in the blanket, knuckles white through the gauze.

"I can't tell you." She swallows hard, and I watch it move in her throat. "But it's the reason he came. It's the reason all of them will keep coming."

She looks at me, and her chin trembles once before she locks it down.

"And if they find it before I do." She draws in a breath that shakes all the way down. "They'll hurt Dale to get to it."

CHAPTER FIVE

Anni

Every pothole on Tennessee Street finds my cracked rib.

The club's old pickup rattles over another one, and pain lances up my side so sharp my vision whites out at the edges.

I grab the door handle with my good hand and hold on until it passes.

Hakon glances over from the driver's seat.